Just sell, baby

George Raine, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, August 8, 1999

1999-08-08 04:00:00 PDT OAKLAND -- Some loyal fans of the Oakland Raiders would stand out in any crowd. The man known as "The Dominator," with the spiked shoulder pads and painted face, is at every home game at the Oakland Coliseum. Other fans have hair colors not yet identified by chemists.

The team's logo features crossed swords and a tough guy with an eye patch. This is a football team with a true blue-collar image.

But look at those people in the new Raiders ads. They look like nice, regular folks. Well, except for the solid black bars over their eyes.

"Yeah we go, but the in-laws think we're in church," a smiling, disguised couple says in one of the billboard ads.

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"Sure I go, but the wife thinks I coach soccer," says another fan.

What kind of an ad campaign would show consumers reluctant to admit they buy the product? A successful one.

The campaign by the Corsi Agency of San Francisco (www.corsi.com), which began to appear on billboards, in print and on radio in late July, has, along with several favorable scouting reports from the Raiders training camp this summer, had an effect:

Sales of single-game tickets through BASS have more than tripled compared with this time last year, and fans who have purchased personal seat licenses (PSLs) for Raiders games at the Coliseum are buying double the number of additional tickets they did in 1998.

It's also likely that the Raiders-49ers preseason game Aug. 30 in Oakland will be a sellout - the first in Oakland since Sept. 8, 1997, when the Raiders lost a Monday night heartbreaker to Kansas City - thereby lifting the dreaded local television blackout.

Since the team's return from Los Angeles in 1995, the Raiders have been averaging about 46,000 fans per game, and management hopes for a 20 percent improvement this year.

Strained relationship&lt;

Seats are empty because the Raiders' relationship with fans and the city of Oakland have been strained since the team's return. Tension arose over what were regarded as overpriced PSLs, losing seasons and breach-of-contract lawsuits concerning the 1996 Coliseum expansion to 63,000 seats.

The Corsi Agency campaign is only costing in the "low $100,000 range," said Richard Rogers, the OFMA chief marketing director and president, but he added it will be expanded if the pace of ticket sales continues.

The campaign says nothing about football; it's all about the fan base and knocking down stereotypical impressions. The message is "it's cool to be a Raiders fan, that you don't have to be ashamed," and that there are regular people in the stands, said Rogers. "It's contrary to some misconceptions about fans and shows that Raiders fans cover a broad spectrum," he said.

There's a fundamental marketing principle at work here, noted David Stewart, chairman of the department of marketing at University of Southern California. It is that people attend entertainment events because they believe people like them will be there. Consumers are also drawn to characteristics that may be appealing to them - like the wholesomeness of the actors in the Raiders ads.

A classic of this genre, he said, is the 1969 Volkswagen commercial by the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in which a man leaves a fortune to his penny-wise nephew who had the good sense to drive a Beetle, while the spendthrifts in the family get nothing.

"But you have to believe you would see these good people when you show up at the football game," Stewart said of the Corsi Agency's work.

Marc Corsi, the company president, believes it. He began attending Raiders games even before he made a show-and-tell presentation on the team, complete with an autographed plastic football, when he was in the fifth grade at Glorietta School in Orinda.

As years passed, Corsi said he noticed an evolution in the Raiders fan base, as well as marketing potential recently in the great influx of people into the team's marketplace. These are "people who do not understand the dynamics of this team in the past," said Corsi.

Last year Corsi and his company, which does about $25 million in billings annually for a diverse client list, went after the ad business of the Oakland Football Marketing Association, a joint venture between the Raiders, Oakland and Alameda County, and ultimately helped design an ad campaign that tells consumers they'll meet their own kind at a game. The tag line says, "It's time to come out."

The agency's creative team was led by Jim Coari, the company's executive vice president and creative director. Its task was to sell tickets, but with a smile.

"The bad rap that the Raiders have had has been around for a while, but you have to startle people, shake them up a bit and get them laughing," said Coari. "We have to tell people to come to the game, that this team deserves for you to come, that great people come, and give it a try," he said.

Compared with national averages, the demographics of Raiders season ticket holders are decidedly upscale, which is not surprising since tickets range in price from $41 to $81.

The season ticket holders are perhaps the most diverse in the National Football League, said Rogers. They're 65 percent white, 16 percent Latino and 12 percent African American.

Thus, Corsi's campaign targets a broad audience, in English and Spanish.

Controversial radio ads&lt;

The agency's two radio spots for the Raiders are more controversial.

One tells the story of a Catholic bishop who reportedly is having a relationship with a priest. The bishop refuses to discuss the matter when asked by reporters, but it turns out that at least a part of the relationship is innocent enough: the two go to Raiders games together.

The commercial began airing during a week when Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann of the Diocese of Santa Rosa resigned, acknowledging having a sexual relationship with a priest. The coincidence prompted at least one complaint to the agency.

In the other radio ad, the wife of a company executive is told she has been seen at a Raiders game with a man named Fernando from shipping, and "nibbling on Fernando's Coliseum dog." In a haughty voice, she denies she attends Raiders games.

"It's a little on the edge," Coari, the creative director, said of the radio spots, but he added that it's necessary to grab the attention of consumers.

The black bars over the consumers' eyes in the billboards, said Coari, are intended merely to take to an extreme something as simple as buying a ticket.

Trying to change history&lt;

With this campaign, said Don Solem, a veteran San Francisco public relations executive, Corsi and the Raiders "are really trying to change a long piece of history," referring to the long-lasting image of a team that caters to "rabid fans."

"Their image has been that their fans did not need to go anywhere else because they had a tough, exciting brand of football, and in fact they never needed to do any marketing because the image was so strong," said Solem.

Before the team abandoned Oakland for Los Angeles in 1982, Raiders games consistently sold out while, said Solem, the marketing of the "cult of the Raiders was that they were tougher than tough - the West Coast Bears."

"They always saw themselves as the contrast to the 49ers, the nicer, cleaner team, epitomized by (quarterbacks) Joe Montana and now Steve Young," he said. "The Raiders owner, Al Davis, was in contrast to all other owners. But that was then and now they are trying to fill empty seats."

The Corsi campaign works, said Solem, because "it's intriguing, even a little titillating."

Stewart, the USC marketing chairman, said the campaign makes sense in suggesting "other kinds of people than I would expect attend the games," but he wonders if consumers buy it.

"I can see the (L.A.) Coliseum out my window," Stewart said from his office. "When they played here (1982 through 1994) we would have the effects of the Sunday game visible on campus on Monday."

Said Stewart: "They are the team of "Everyman,' and, demographics of season ticket holders aside, I think there is a group among them who may still want to act out their adolescence a little belatedly. The games provide them a venue."

Nevertheless, said Solem, "The message here is it's OK to be a Raiders fan. It's OK for non-zealots to be a Raiders fan, and that's a positive thing."

The spike in ticket sales is all that really matters, said Rogers. "There is some good news on the horizon, and we are working hard to make it better," he said.